12.30 Thursday June 6^th 2013

PRESS RELEASE:

hannah festival celebrates The North

A new festival celebrating ‘great things happening in the North’ takes place in Leeds between June 12^th and 16^th, with over 25 events covering an amazing range of topics from future transport systems to ‘tweetart’, poetry, digital creativity, ‘radical regionalism’, the history of women’s suffrage, craft beer and ‘monsterology’. Most of the events are free.

hannah festival is inspired and informed by the work of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation, named after Hannah Mitchell (1871 – 1946). Festival organiser Andrew Wilson says “The Hannah Mitchell Foundation is ace and the festival is a tribute and celebration of a great Northerner who loved the culture and creativity of seemingly ‘ordinary’ people who did extraordinary things. And there will be plenty of extraordinary things happening during the festival.”

Foundation secretary Paul Salveson says “we are a radical voice for the North…our aim of democratic decentralisation must mean that we get lots more of the great stuff that is celebrated in the festival. The new regionalism is about creativity, innovation and ‘speculations on the soul’. We are delighted that our work has inspired this festival and we hope lots of people will come along to the events in Leeds.”

“Hannah is a celebration of great stuff going on now, and it’s also a space for connecting and sharing so that more of it can happen, said Andrew.”

The event has been organised with no grant aid, just contributions from supporters. It’s hoped that the hannah festival will become an annual event, in cities and towns across the North. This year’s festival includes an event in Manchester on Saturday June 15^th which will discuss policies and ideas for a new North.

The full programme is at www.hannahfestival.com

Ends/

For more information on the festival ring Andrew Wilson  07980 224927; For more on The Hannah Mitchell Foundation Paul Salveson 07795 008691

Note for editors

The Hannah Mitchell Foundation is a broadly-based campaign for Northern devolution, supported by many Northern MPs and peers. Linda Riordan is president of the Foundation. The Foundation was founded in March 2012 to lobby for devolution to the North of England and is rapidly building up support across the North of England. Its patrons include Lord Prescott, several MPs and the grand-son of Hannah Mitchell. Hannah (1871-1946) was a radical activist who was imprisoned during the agitation for women’s votes. She went on to become a popular councillor in the Newton Heath ward of Manchester. Although she had just two weeks of formal schooling she was a talented writer.

Download the press release as a word doc, click here.

The Hannah Mitchell Foundation is aghast at the suggestion that one of the three great ‘national’ museums in the North of England may close as a result of Government cuts, with the survivors facing major cuts. The National Railway Museum; the Media Museum; and the Museum of Science and Industry all face an uncertain future following today’s announcement.

What have they got in common (alongside being outstanding world-class facilities) ?

Answers on a postcard please……

Yet this wasn’t my reaction to seeing the trailer. From which I learnt that Tom Howard of the NME has written that “grown men will cry” upon seeing the film, which is released on 5 June. Never mind the film, the 2 minutes and 17 seconds of the trailer are enough to move me. “Why are they”, as a fan asks during the trailer, “so important to people? You know and I know but you can’t write it down, can you?”

When put like that, it seems foolish to even try to write down why I feel as I do when I watch the trailer. But I am going to try, anyway. Most obviously and fundamentally, the Stone Roses are a great, life-affirming band. They are also one that, after their acrimonious breakup, many thought they would never see live again. There is a sense of answered prayers about seeing them on stage again.

But could they have existed at all if not hewn from the rich topsoil of Manchester? Could the Stone Roses possibly have come from anywhere else? If not then is not part of the reason for the importance of the Stone Roses where they come from?

As Jarvis Cocker, another indie icon, once said on the South Bank Show (after 5 minutes and 30 seconds): “I think Sheffield’s got a personality”. What can be said of Sheffield can also be said of Manchester. The easy charm and swagger of Ian Brown is the charm and swagger of Manchester. The self-depreciation and wry observation of Jarvis Cocker speak of Sheffield’s personality.

While the Stone Roses and Pulp embody the personalities of Manchester and Sheffield, it is less clear that the governance of these cities also expresses these personalities. The splendour of Manchester Town Hall seems more a reflection of the self-assurance of bygone city leaders, rather than mirroring the contemporary belief of the Stone Roses. The people of Manchester may see themselves in the Stone Roses but those nominally in charge of the city are beholden to national leaders for the powers and resources necessary to further improve their wonderful city.

Ian Brown has famously observed that Manchester has everything except a beach but, actually, compared to similarly sized cities in other countries, it also lacks political power over its own destiny. This can be traced back to Margaret Thatcher’s time in government, as Paul Salveson, General Secretary of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation, wrote in Socialism with a Northern Accent: “As regional inequality was growing, the ability of local government to defend working people was also being undermined.”

One of the most eye-opening aspects of Salveson’s book for me is its documenting of a wide-ranging, northern, socialist, cultural tradition – including the working-class writers of fiction and poetry, often in dialect, the socialist newspapers and speaking tours, the Clarion cycling clubs, the importance of the countryside and the co-operative movement.

We might see Brown and Cocker as poets. Certainly as working class lads done good. But, as they infrequently comment publicly on politics, it would probably be a stretch to see them as explicitly part of a northern, socialist, cultural tradition.

Equally, they are massive presences on the cultural landscape of the north. It reaffirms me in my confidence in the native genius of the northern people that they are so. Possessed of these qualities, these people have nothing to fear and everything to gain from a more devolved political settlement.

The change could be so dramatic as to be the stuff of Shane Meadow’s next documentary. For now I eagerly anticipate his film on the Stone Roses and wish that the north had political leadership as dynamic and ground-breaking as the Stone Roses are as band.

Jonathan Todd is a former ministerial advisor and senior consultant at Europe Economics. An economist with high-level policy and political experience, he remains an associate at Europe Economics, Demos and ESL UK. He also writes for Labour Uncut. Currently he is undertaking a pioneering research project for UK Music on the economic contribution of the music industry to the British economy. @jonathan_todd

HannaH 2013 is in Leeds, June 13th to 15th.

HannaH asks three questions:

What great stuff is happening in the North now?
Who is doing it?
How can more of it happen?

That’s great stuff like the Small Cinema project in Moston, Manchester. A group of artists and local volunteers got together and turned an empty room at the Miners Arts and Music Centre into a working cinema.

HannaH festival highlights new activities like that in any field, including art, music, new businesses, new kinds of social organisation and new scientific inventions.

To discover new events the festival draws on the expertise and enthusiasm of people living and working here. They will organise the events they want see happening, making connections with other places in the North and internationally.

The job of the festival is just to organise the behind the scenes things, including fundraising, needed to make it all happen.

HannaH is a space for connnecting and sharing. Sharing skills, inspiration, and new kinds of knowledge. New things happen when people get inspired by each other’s work, and when people with different kinds of knowledge come together.

The first HannaH festival will be in Leeds in June this year, in Newcastle next year, then in Sheffield and Doncaster in 2015 and across the Pennines from 2016.

Read more of our response to Labour’s proposal for regional banks here

“This is the sort of radical and creative thinking which Labour needs to do more of,” said the Foundation’s chair, Barry Winter. “Northern businesses – and people with new ideas – need the support of a banking system which understands the needs of the region. We simply don’t have that at the moment.”

The inspiration for the regional banks plan owes much to the experience of the German regional and local banks, the ‘sparkassen’. They are only able to lend within their region and have a duty to ‘promote civic growth’. Professor Paul Salveson, general secretary of the Foundation, commented that “there are many more lessons to be learnt from the German experience. Alongside regional banks the Germans have a highly effective system of directly-elected regional government which works closely with the regional banks. We need something similar here if we are serious about promoting a strong Northern economy”.

In 2011 the German local banks had a total loan stock of £280 billion whilst the figure for German commercial banks was only £153 billion. “Having a strong network of regional and local banks, some run as co-operatives and mutuals, is essential for the revival of the North’s economy. Working with a Northern regional government and empowered local authorities, we could reverse the decline of the region’s industrial base,” said Barry.

Ends/ For more information ring Paul Salveson 07795 008691

Download the document (MS Word doc): Welcome for Miliband’s regional banks proposal

Note for editors

The Hannah Mitchell Foundation is a broadly-based campaign for Northern devolution, supported by many Northern MPs and peers. Linda Riordan is president of the Foundation.

The Foundation was founded in March 2012 to lobby for devolution to the North of England and is rapidly building up support across the North of England. Its patrons include Lord Prescott, several MPs and the grand-son of Hannah Mitchell. Hannah (1871-1946) was a radical activist who was imprisoned during the agitation for women’s votes. She went on to become a popular councillor in the Newton Heath ward of Manchester. Although she had just two weeks of formal schooling she was a talented writer.

This was the focus for the conference, A Voice for the Northern Economy, held in Leeds by IPPR North on 28 January 2013. The keynote speaker was Rachel Reeves MP for Leeds West, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Neil McLean Chair of Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) responded.

Read more of the report by Jenny Cronin here A Voice for the Northern Economy. IPPR North Conference (Opens a word document)

But then came the first clear signal that we have got from Labour since 2010 on how they see the future structure of devolution in the North. Reeves condemned the abolition of Regional Development Agencies but then announced that Labour had no intention of dismantling what she herself called “the patchwork” of organisations and funding streams that had been set up since. Explicitly she said the Local Enterprise Partnerships would stay. So there we have it, parochial, underfunded, underpowered LEPs are going to stay. Labour hasn’t even been prepared to listen to the case for a northern wide body with big powers devolved from London on issues like transport, skills and economic investment.

This won’t please Chris Glen, Chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses in West Yorkshire. He has scathing criticism of the Leeds LEP saying it has had “limited impact”. He refers to reports that Yorkshire has the second lowest rate of construction in the UK and the region is tenth out of twelve regions for attracting inward investment from larger private sector companies. Warming to his work Mr Glen says Leeds LEP has had poor engagement with small businesses and needs to be more transparent. Perhaps Rachel Reeves should have listened to Mr Glen before committing a potential Labour government to endorse these fragile vehicles for economic recovery.

Jim Hancock

Jim Hancock is former Political Editor of BBC North West. He has been a broadcaster on politics for over thirty years, and interviewed every Prime Minister from Harold Wilson to David Cameron.

About the Foundation

The Hannah Mitchell Foundation works for a fair and prosperous North of England.

For that to happen, people and places in the North must have the political authority and responsibility needed for us to take care of ourselves.

That means devolution to local and regional government just like in London, Wales and Scotland.

The Foundation is non-party political and has support from a broad progressive coalition based around values of democracy, fairness, inclusivity, self-reliance, enterprise and co-operation.

The President of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation is Linda Riordan, MP for Halifax, and Prof. Paul Salveson MBE is General Secretary.

About Hannah Mitchell

The Foundation is named after, and inspired by, Hannah Mitchell (1872–1956).

Hannah Mitchell was a lifelong fighter for democracy and fairness, put in Strangeways prison in 1906 during the campaign for votes for women. She went on to become a councillor in Manchester, representing Newton Heath.

In her autobiography The Hard Way Up she mentions one of her proudest achievements being the public wash house which she struggled to get built to make working class women’s lives easier.

Her desire for ‘beauty in civic life’ blossomed in her work on public libraries, parks and gardens.

Together we can build a fair and prosperous North.

Why not join us?

The full annual membership fee is £20, £10 concessionary rate and special under-21 rate of £5.

You can download a membership form by clicking “Join Us” above.

What we did in 2012

Read about how much the Foundation achieved in its first year here.

“The fundamental problem that confronts the North, as it does in varying degrees every other region of Britain, is that of economic transformation. The question is not merely how to create economic growth (there was plenty of that during the 1990s and 2000s, but look where we are now), but how to build genuine development capable of delivering generalised and sustainable prosperity with low levels of inequality. If that can be done, then the country’s deepening social disintegration and many of the problems it has engendered, can be halted and reversed.”

Download the full paper: The Economic Transformation of the North

Jeffrey Henderson is a Professor at the University of Bristol and, currently, a Visiting Professor at the University of Leeds. He was born in County Durham and brought up there and in Yorkshire. He returned to the North in 1990 and lived first in Manchester and then in Leeds. He now lives partly in Leeds and partly in Bristol. Between 1992 and 1994 he was an advisor to Robin Cook MP, then Shadow Minister of Trade and Industry. During that time he worked on Cook’s economic policy manifesto, Re-Making Britain’s Future.